Mariana Paperback – Bargain Price, April 1, 2012

Hands down my favorite author. This book creeps up on you. I have it in paper and on audio. It's a steady pace, but I kid you not when I say you won't be steady inside by the end. Rips your heart out and then sews it back together. Love this book. I love this author period. I would have to say The Winter Sea is my favorite, but I loved this book, Firebird, Desperate Fortune, Named of the Dragon, and The Rose Garden are all amazing both in print and on audio. Winter Sea is amazing on Audio. If you don't get any other ones on Audio, get that one. I won't give any spoilers away for Mariana. All I can say is that no one does a other worldly/supernatural element and transitioning between to timelines like Kearsley. It's flawless and you don't doubt the validity of what is happening in the story. Her sense of place is exquisitely written. The location being it's own character in the story. She's a writer's writer, sweeping you away with her storytelling.

I'll start off with the good things. Kearsley has a great talent for characters, and I always love hers. You really get to know the personality of the characters, as if they were real people. She's also quite good at settings and describing places in a way that you fee like you're there. Overall, until the very end, I liked Mariana. It had the depth of plot and emotion that I've come to expect from her other books.All that said, the reason it only gets a 3 from me is that it starts out very slowly, and the ending is terrible. And it's not that it couldn't have been good...I don't object to it for what it is (trying to be specific without spoiling anything). It's that there was absolutely no set-up for it. I even went back and re-skimmed the book to make sure I hadn't missed any clues or build-up. But there wasn't. So, by the end of the book, I have very little emotional connection to the way it turned out, except for just trying to convince myself that if that's the way it worked out in the end, the everyone would be happy.Also, having the first person for both the Julia and Mariana parts was a bit confusing, and even when I figured out the reason Kearsley was doing it, it still made it a bit difficult to track the plot and which time period things were happening in. Even if you argued that the reader is supposed to feel confused like Julia, it's a poor tactic, and it always just made me skip ahead a bit to figure out where I was.Overall, this wasn't one of my favorites, which is too bad, because it was about 80% there.

A beautifully written, haunting romance set in modern times and the 1660's.I've read all the author's books. While all are very well done, this is the only one that brought tears to my eyes. It's better than "The Winter Sea," which many reviewers say is their favorite Kearsley book.Kearsley's lyrical writing reminded me of the wonderful authors Mary Stewart and Daphne du Maurier--high praise indeed.For readers who enjoy a touch of paranormal fantasy with their romance, this book should be on their shelf of all time favorites.Highly recommend.

Mariana is one of my favorite Kearsley books along with Winter Sea and The Rose Garden. I hated to put it down to deal with my real life such as eating and sleeping.Like Kearsley's other books, this story has a paranormal side to it along with historical fiction, mystery and romance. Julia, a thirty-something woman, has been drawn to a centuries old farmhouse since she was a child. When she sees it is for sale, she buys it on an impulse. After she moves in, strange things begin to happen.I enjoyed the paranormal twists and turns, but I also liked reading about the small town and the people who populated it, both in the present and the past. The story did not end the way I had anticipated and that too added to my enjoyment.

Sigh…ah…what a wonderful, escapist book. This is much like a getaway weekend, but in literary form! And the first requirement is that you must suspend your sense of what's real and what's not. OK…ready?Imaginatively written by Susanna Kearsley, this is the story of two people living 300+ years apart. Julia Beckett is a 30-year-old children's book illustrator who inherits a little bit of money from a distant aunt—enough for her to buy an old house she has always dreamed of owning that is located in a quiet English village. She moves in and immediately feels a sense of home. But something very weird is happening. With no more warning than an intense ringing in her ears, Julia keeps being transported back in time to the mid-17th century where she becomes a woman named Mariana, who lived unhappily in the house Julia just purchased. And what exactly is going on between Mariana and the very handsome, but very mysterious, lord of the manor?Time travel is a time-honored book plot, and Kearsley adapts it seamlessly into the story. Julia is instantly transported back and forth in time, and this seamless transition is also reflected in the writing—without even a paragraph break sometimes. And it works perfectly! The structure is brilliant because the two stories of Julia and Mariana blend as one, a kind of miscible literary technique.This is one of those books you read to just relax and let the real world melt away. Make yourself a cuppa, get comfy, and enjoy!